Verify NSW Judgment
Use caselaw.nsw.gov.au as the controlling source. NSW Caselaw is the
official publisher for the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, Court of Criminal
Appeal, Land and Environment Court, District Court, Local Court, NCAT and
other NSW courts and tribunals, with coverage from 1999 onward (earlier for
some courts). Produce a provenance record, not a bare assertion that a case
"exists".
Read ../../references/case-law-verification-method.md before verifying. It defines the outcome semantics, access rules and restriction handling.
Workflow
- Fix the scope.
- Accept medium-neutral NSW citations (
NSWSC,NSWCA,NSWCCA,NSWDC,NSWLC,NSWLEC,NSWCATAP,NSWCATADand other NSW identifiers), NSWLR reported citations, and NSW case names. - Return
OUTSIDE SCOPEfor other jurisdictions, treatment analysis or advice. Note that decisions before a court's NSW Caselaw coverage start may exist without being published there; that is anUNVERIFIABLEboundary, notNOT FOUND.
- Accept medium-neutral NSW citations (
- Resolve the citation at the official publisher.
- Use the advanced search's Medium Neutral Citation field. The citation must include the square brackets, as the form itself states.
- The search executes only when the request carries the form's full
query string, including the site's
courtsandtribunalsidentifier parameters — a baremncparameter returns the empty form. Submit the search through the site's own form (directly or in a browser) rather than a hand-built minimal URL, and read theDisplaying X - Y of Zmarker for the result count. - Make one targeted lookup per citation; never crawl or bulk-download listings.
- For an NSWLR citation, resolve to the medium-neutral citation through the site's search before concluding anything.
- Confirm identity.
- Match the case name, citation, court and decision date as published, and record the NSW Caselaw decision URL.
- A direct fetch of a decision page returns the metadata header only — citation, case name, dates, before, catchwords and the Restrictions field — which is sufficient for existence and identity. The judgment body loads in a browser session; quote checks need the rendered page or the site's document download, not the bare HTML fetch.
- Treat a supplied case name that differs materially from the published name as a qualification, and say which differs.
- Respect the publisher's conditions.
- The Copyright in Judicial Decisions Notice 1995 (NSW) permits reproduction conditioned on accuracy and proper context. Reproduce nothing inaccurately, and do not republish party names into contexts a search engine indexes.
- Check the decision page for restriction, suppression or non-publication notations before quoting anything. Preserve any found and treat them as qualifications.
- Report using the result contract.
Result contract
Lead with one status: VERIFIED, VERIFIED WITH QUALIFICATIONS,
UNVERIFIABLE, NOT FOUND or OUTSIDE SCOPE, as defined in the shared
method. NOT FOUND means NSW Caselaw was searched by citation and case name
within its coverage period and contains no matching decision — report it as
a fabrication flag for human confirmation, never as an accusation.
textRequested check: <citation or case name as supplied> Jurisdiction: New South Wales, Australia Citation type: <medium-neutral / reported / case name> Official case name: <as published, or not established> Medium-neutral citation: <[YEAR] COURT N, or not established> Court or tribunal: <as published, or not established> Decision date: <as published, or not established> Coverage note: <inside NSW Caselaw coverage / possible pre-coverage decision> Restrictions: <none observed / notation preserved verbatim> Official sources: <exact caselaw.nsw.gov.au URLs actually inspected> Checked: <date and Australian timezone> Limitations and review: <what remains unverified and the human-review point>
Fail closed
Return UNVERIFIABLE, not NOT FOUND, when NSW Caselaw is unreachable, the
search fails, the citation predates the court's coverage, or an NSWLR
citation cannot be resolved to a medium-neutral form. Return NOT FOUND
only after both a citation search and a case name search inside the coverage
period returned no match. Never infer existence from an aggregator,
secondary source or model memory.


